Distortion

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Distortion \Dis*tor"tion\, n. [L. distortio: cf. F. distortion.]
     1. The act of distorting, or twisting out of natural or
        regular shape; a twisting or writhing motion; as, the
        distortions of the face or body.
        [1913 Webster]
  


     2. A wresting from the true meaning. --Bp. Wren.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. The state of being distorted, or twisted out of shape or
        out of true position; crookedness; perversion.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     4. (Med.) An unnatural deviation of shape or position of any
        part of the body producing visible deformity.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  distortion
       n 1: a change for the worse [syn: {deformation}]
       2: a shape resulting from distortion [syn: {distorted shape}]
       3: an optical phenomenon resulting from the failure of a lens
          or mirror to produce a good image [syn: {aberration}, {optical
          aberration}]
       4: a change (usually undesired) in the waveform of an acoustic
          or analog electrical signal; the difference between two
          measurements of a signal (as between the input and output
          signal); "heavy metal guitar players use vacuum tube
          amplifiers to produce extreme distortion"
       5: the act of distorting something so it seems to mean
          something it was not intended to mean [syn: {overrefinement},
           {straining}, {torture}, {twisting}]
       6: the mistake of misrepresenting the facts

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  215 Moby Thesaurus words for "distortion":
     aberrancy, aberration, abstractionism, abuse of terms,
     anamorphosis, apparent soundness, bad likeness, birdies, birthmark,
     blackhead, bleb, blemish, blister, blooping, blurping, botch,
     bulla, burlesque, caricature, casuistry, catachresis, check,
     cicatrix, circularity, coloring, comedo, confabulation, contorting,
     crack, crater, craze, daub, defacement, defect, defectiveness,
     deflection, deflexure, deformation, deformity, delusion, deviancy,
     diffraction, diffusion, disfiguration, disfigurement,
     disingenuousness, dispersion, eisegesis, equivocalness,
     equivocation, errancy, erroneousness, error, evasive reasoning,
     exaggeration, expressionism, fallaciousness, fallacy,
     false coloring, false swearing, falseness, falsification,
     falsifying, falsity, fault, faultiness, feedback, flaw, flawedness,
     flection, flexure, flutter, fluttering, freckle, garbling, gloss,
     hamartia, hemangioma, heresy, heterodoxy, hickey, hissing, howling,
     hum, hyperbole, illusion, inaccuracy, injustice, insincerity,
     jesuitism, jesuitry, keloid, kink, lentigo, litotes,
     malconformation, malentendu, malformation, malobservation, milium,
     misapplication, misapprehension, miscitation, miscoloring,
     misconception, misconstruction, misdoing, misdrawing,
     misexplanation, misexplication, misexposition, misfeasance,
     misintelligence, misinterpretation, misjudgment, mispainting,
     misquotation, misreading, misrendering, misreport,
     misrepresentation, misshape, misstatement, misteaching,
     mistranslation, misunderstanding, misuse of words, mole,
     motorboating, mystification, needle scar, nevus, nonrealism,
     obfuscation, obscurantism, overdrawing, overstatement,
     oversubtlety, parody, peccancy, perjury, perversion, philosophism,
     pimple, pit, plausibility, plausibleness, pock, pockmark,
     port-wine mark, port-wine stain, prevarication, pustule,
     rationalization, refraction, rift, rumble, scab, scar, scatter,
     scratch, scratching, scribble, sebaceous cyst, self-contradiction,
     shredding, sin, sinfulness, skewness, slanting, sophism,
     sophistical reasoning, sophistication, sophistry, special pleading,
     speciosity, specious reasoning, speciousness, split, squeals,
     squeezing, static, straining, strawberry mark, sty, subtlety,
     torsion, torturing, track, travesty, twist, twisting,
     understatement, unorthodoxy, untrueness, untruth, untruthfulness,
     verruca, vesicle, vicious circle, vicious reasoning, wale, warp,
     wart, weal, welt, wen, whistles, whitehead, woomping, wow, wowwows,
     wrenching, wrong, wrongness